The present disclosure relates generally to information handling systems, and more particularly to providing link level fault tolerance for Fibre Channel over Ethernet data traffic transmitted via Virtual Link Trunking (VLT) based link aggregated Fibre Channel Forwarding information handling systems.
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Some information handling systems such as switches utilize link aggregation to combine multiple network connections in order to increase throughput, provide redundancy, and/or provide a variety of other link aggregation benefits known in the art. For example, some switches utilize Virtual Link Trunking (VLT), which is a proprietary link aggregation protocol that is provided by the Assignee of the present disclosure and that allows for the setup of an aggregated link to a plurality of different switches. VLT is a layer-2 link aggregation protocol that may be utilized by servers and access switches to, for example, provide a redundant load-balanced connection to the core-network in a loop-free environment, provide uplinks between access switches and core switches, and/or provide a variety of other VLT benefits that would be apparent to one of skill in the art. However, in network topologies utilizing Fibre Channel communications, the use of link aggregation raises some issues.
For example, network topologies utilizing Fibre Channel communications may include Fibre Channel switch devices such as, for example, Fiber Channel Forwarder (or Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) Forwarder) devices (FCF devices) that operate to transmit FCoE communications between Converged Network Adapters (CNAs) in host devices and the target devices with which they communicate. When multiple FCF devices are part of multi-switch Link Aggregation Groups (LAGs) such as those provided via VLT discussed above, conventional systems isolate the different FCF devices into two different network fabrics (e.g., by assigning each of the FCF devices different FCoE mapped address prefixes (FC-MAPs) and FCoE Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs)). In such conventional systems, FCoE is only supported on individual FCF devices, as multiple FCFs operating as VLT peers are not capable of handling FCoE, and end-to-end path level redundancy (e.g., between the CNAs and the target devices) must be achieved using Multi-Path Input/Output (MPIO) on the host devices (as is done in “air-gapped” network fabrics.) As such, the FCF devices in such conventional systems act as independent Fibre Channel switches, with the link fault tolerance provided by LAGs (and/or link aggregation infrastructure provided by VLT) unused, and the LAGs (and/or link aggregation infrastructure provided by VLT) limited to the transmission of non-FCoE traffic.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide an improved link aggregated FCoE system.